TEDxBeaconStreet: Intimate Evening Talks is an opportunity for the audience to connect with speakers and engage with their community members.

In a state of the art recording studio at Brookline Interactive Group, we’ll host a series of incredible talks along with small breakout conversation and on-site adventures. Talks will focus on themes of creativity, empathy, and innovation.

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed.
Check event website for more information.

Nick Garcia

Nick Garcia is a sound designer, composer, and music technologist, instructor at the Mmmmaven audio production and DJ school in Boston, and a co-founder of the HNDMD label and event company. He has fifteen years of experience as a multi-instrumentalist and now focuses on developing compelling electronic music performances for the laptop. He has released one solo album, Strength To Leave, and has written music for a variety of visual media, including the 2012 film Obey The Giant. He graduated cum laude from the Berklee College of Music in December 2013.

Marie-Jose Montpetit

Dr. Marie-José Montpetit is a technical researcher in the MIT Comparative Media Studies department looking in to the future of video and television from a content and technology perspective. She is also lecturer at the MIT Media Lab on Social Television, a collaborator to the Communications Futures Programs on wireless networking and an advisor to Boston area startups in video and social networking. In 2014 she is an invited lecturer on Social Television at the Université du Québec in Montreal. Her pioneering work on Social, Wireless and Multi-screen television is recognized world wide and has been rewarded by a Motorola Technology Prize in 2007 and a MIT Technology Review TR10 in 2010 as well as a Montreal-Video award and a TEDx Silk Road presentation in 2012. Her main research is on the convergence of networking and video for seamless mobility and social visual communication. Dr Montpetit is also a technology reviewer at the European Union and a participant to many standardization bodies. She holds a Ph.D in EECS from the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and lives in Boston.

Rajesh Nair

Rajesh is a product designer and a serial entrepreneur. His last company DegreeC specializes in thermal management of complex electronic systems from laptops, servers, and medical equipment to missile launchers.
He holds bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Electronics & Communications, and graduate degrees in Electronic Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering. He is currently completing his MS in System Design and Management at MIT.

Tom Parmenter

Tom Parmenter made his living by his pen from the time he was a copyboy on the Atlanta Journal. He wrote satire at Purdue University and trekked to Chicago where he covered crime and politics for the legendary City News Bureau of Chicago and the semi-legendary Chicago’s American, the last gasp of the Hearst papers in Chicago. At trans-action magazine, he edited and wrote social-science journalism and covered the Detroit riots of 1967. He moved to the Boston area to serve as a publications associate for the Harvard Program on Technology and Society and Harvard Center for Law and Education. He joined Digital Equipment corporation as a technical writer in 1978 and ended up managing a software engineering group supporting technical documentation. He later managed documentation groups for Atria and Rational Software before retiring. He is currently a percussionist for the Jamaica Plain Honk Band, building on several years in the 70s in Velocette, a rock’n'roll band. He lives in West Newton.

John MacDonald

John is a family practitioner from Toronto who recently came to the US to study at MIT where he is an MBA candidate at Sloan School of Management and instructor at the MIT Media Lab. His interests lie around understanding the economic pressures, politics, and opportunities for innovation within medicine
John has a particular interest in health technology and innovative health services delivery in low resource settings. He recently became an instructor at the MIT Media Lab for a course about novel ways of using consumer grade technology to address healthcare challenges. The course introduces students to pressing health challenges as well as novel design and prototyping techniques that might be used to solve them. The course is in association with Prof. Ramesh Raskar’s Camera Culture Group and the Tata Center for Technology and Design. He is also a clinical lead on several health sensors projects with the Camera Culture group.
John is a licensed Canadian physician, having completed his residency in family medicine (general practice) at the University of Toronto and his MD at the University of Calgary. He was also a founding member of the Toronto Health Organization Performance Evaluation (T-HOPE) research group focusing on evaluating health programs in the developing world and creating new metrics and frameworks to evaluate their impact.

Aya Sakaguchi

Aya Jennifer Sakaguchi is an Ed.M Candidate at Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Technology, Innovation, and Education Program. At HGSE, she is currently researching the innovative uses of technology and digital media in education to create cutting edge educational tools. Aya is also a Research Assistant with MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group.
Aya received her Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Bowdoin College in 2010 with a double major in French and Government and Legal Studies and a minor in Africana Studies. Upon graduating, Aya taught English and Information Technology at Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, France as a guest lecturer. She then taught digital storytelling as the Palo Alto International Film Festival’s Youth and Education Program Manager in Silicon Valley. Most recently, Aya was a Partner Operations Coordinator at YouTube and Google in San Bruno, California where she oversaw content delivery onto the YouTube platform.

Dave Rezendes

Dave Rezendes is a photographer specializing in architectural and interior spaces, underwater, and travel photography. Beginning his career shooting underwater subjects in Honolulu, Hawai’i, his range quickly evolved and branched out to other areas of photography. Eventually shooting for several publications, producing fine art prints, and earning recognition in 2011 as international Photographer of the Year in a juried real estate photography award.